Passenger bridges are sufficiently known from the prior art. They serve the transition for persons from the aircraft directly into the airport building. Since the access to the airport building is frequently arranged higher than the door opening of the aircraft, the aircraft bridges, which are held by a traveling mechanism at the front, movable end, frequently extend at a downward slope in the direction toward the door opening of the aircraft.
At the lower end of the passenger bridge, it has a cabin that is pivotable about a vertical axis, with the coupling module for the transition from the cabin into the aircraft being arranged at the front end at the cabin.
To match the coupling module to the door opening of the aircraft, it can be pivoted at the cabin of the passenger bridge. U.S. Pat. No. 4,559,660 A shows a cabin pivotable about a vertical axis.
It is furthermore known to pivot the floor arrangement about a horizontally extending axis, as disclosed by EP 2 397 411 B1. It is proposed therein that the coupling module, and thus also the floor arrangement, is held by the cabin of the passenger bridge pivotable about a horizontally extending longitudinal center axis. The longitudinal center axis here extends substantially centrally through the opening in the coupling module that extends between the floor arrangement and the projecting roof. In so doing, for example, the longitudinal center axis approximately passes through the center of an area overspanned by the projecting roof and the floor arrangement.
Arcuate rail sections and a plurality of rollers that can roll along the arcuate rail sections serve the supporting reception of the coupling module at the cabin. The arcuate rail sections extend in this respect about the longitudinal center axis for pivoting the coupling module. The floor arrangement is thereby held in a supporting manner at the frame of the coupling module so that the frame has to have a correspondingly loadable design, in particular when the weight of the floor arrangement and the weight of, for example, persons or objects that are standing on the floor arrangement also have to be taken up via the frame.
A lateral projection arises between the cabin and the floor arrangement of the coupling module due to the lateral movement in the floor arrangement that results on a pivot movement of the coupling module about a longitudinal center axis lying above the floor arrangement. A corresponding gap has to be closed in a complex manner using corresponding surface bodies, for example wave bellows. A lateral and vertical projection that can form tripping points for passengers can furthermore arise due to the pivoting of the floor arrangement relative to the floor arrangement of the cabin. The construction design of the supporting reception of the coupling module at the cabin of the passenger bridge by means of the arcuate rail sections and by means of rollers is furthermore complex and the floor arrangement experiences, in a manner of speaking, a suspended arrangement at the frame of the coupling module. To ensure a corresponding load capacity of the floor arrangement, the coupling module has to be designed with a supporting structure.